Новости за 19.07.2016

BEST OF 2016 Talmudic jurisprudence. “According to Exodus, an ox that kills a human being is to be stoned to death immediately; yet it is only after goring three times that the ox earns the designation ‘forewarned’. How, then, could any ox ever be forewarned, when it wouldn’t live long enough to kill three times? One answer would be that the Bible is incoherent on this point. But such an answer is unavailable to the rabbis, who are fairly free in elaborating the Bible, but never simply repudiate... Читать дальше...

On foot through the Darien Gap, a 10,000-square-mile rectangle of swamp, mountains, and rainforest straddling the border between Colombia and Panama, which is now a route for desperate migrants hoping to reach the United States. “The expanse is dominated by narco traffickers and Cuba-backed guerrillas who’ve been waging war on the government of Colombia since 1964. Hundreds of migrants enter each year; many never emerge, killed or abandoned by smugglers on ghost trails”

How a group of malicious computer hackers could reduce New York City to chaos. “Getting access to the power grid had been simple enough. They mailed a USB stick to engineers at several companies that operate power-generating facilities in the New York area, with an attached letter saying the stick included an explanation of their benefits package for the upcoming year. Most of the engineers plugged the thumb drive into a home computer, but several took it to work and opened the document there”

How to invent a new classic dish: Discover the essence of an old classic dish, and express it with new ingredients. “When you eat something amazing, you don’t just respond to the dish in front of you; you are transported back to another moment in your life. Where this gets really exciting is when you realize that many dishes from around the world share some base patterns, and by reverse-engineering one of these dishes you can actually tap into many of them at the same time”

Mourad Laachraoui is an Olympic athlete; his brother Najim was the suicide bomber who blew up Brussels airport. “It is often siblings who perpetrate Islamist attacks. Wail and Waleed al-Shehri on Sept. 11; Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston; Saïd and Chérif Kouachi at Charlie Hebdo. Islamic State recruits most of its new fighters from the circles of friends and families. Mourad must not only accept that his brother turned into a monster, but must also prove that he isn’t one himself”

Jurisprudence. The goring ox. “According to Exodus, an ox that kills a human being is to be stoned to death immediately; yet it is only after goring three times that the ox earns the designation ‘forewarned’. How, then, could any ox ever be forewarned, when it wouldn’t live long enough to kill three times? One answer would be that the Bible is incoherent on this point. But such an answer is unavailable to the rabbis, who are fairly free in elaborating the Bible, but never simply repudiate it”

“There are worse fates than covering a Republican convention, but damned if I can think of any. The traffic is ungodly. The frumpy delegates look like they were tailored by Betsy Ross. The protesters smell like old cheese stored in a used sweat sock. In the unlikely event you stumble upon a story it will have been tweeted six ways to Sunday before you can turn on your laptop .. It all seemed a lot funnier when there were a million impediments to Trump becoming Leader of the Free World”